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iSchool Capstone

2016

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Musical Metadata: Creating a Dynamic Sheet Music & Instrument Catalog for Seattle JazzED

Seattle JazzED, a music education non-profit, has two substantial and growing collections: sheet music used by instructors and instruments lent to students. Because neither collection was inventoried, it was difficult for JazzED staff to track where instruments were or what song arrangements had already been purchased. We created a database for, and cataloged, JazzED’s non-bibliographic resources using custom metadata built around their needs. We constructed the database on a cloud-based platform, allowing staff and instructors to easily share and edit entries, check out instruments, make notes about repairs, and search for songs by skill level, style, and more. This project provides JazzED with a personalized system that saves their staff precious time and energy, which in turn supports their mission to empower students of all backgrounds. By dramatically expanding JazzED’s ability to manage their resources, we have contributed to their powerful impact on students and music education in our community.
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OneRoof: Unified Group Housing

Expensive housing prices and the desire to get out of their family homes are pushing more and more young adults to share housing with other tenants. However, group housing comes with its own heap of problems. Neglected chores, unpaid debts, and unhelpful roommates all combine to heavily strain relationships between tenants and complicate what should be the most comfortable part of our lives. OneRoof solves these complexities of group housing by directly targeting the two roots of the problem: disorganized communication and lack of accountability. Our solution features flexible task creation, and neatly organizes tasks both made by and assigned to you in one simple feed. Tenants are able to remind and keep track of their roommates’ tasks, and verify that they have been completed. By providing a tool that promotes clear communication and reliability, we help simplify household responsibilities and open up more time for our users’ daily endeavors.
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Project Fresh

We set out to create a food spoilage tracking system that would allow a user to plan meals, coordinate shopping trips, save money, and keep a more clear mental image of the items the user currently has at home. Our hope is to foster an improved sense of what food items are available to a person and when those food items will pass their usable dates, so as to save our users time and money. The goals of this project are not only limited to personal food storage and tracking, as the world is facing a mounting issue with food sustainability. As our numbers increase our demand for food increases and so does our overall cumulative waste. We seek to help not only those who would use our application, as much as the the world at large, by maximizing food consumption and reducing avoidable expiration based waste.
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Proposing Research: Organizational Dashboard (PROD)

PROD is an online dashboard prototype designed to help UW School of Nursing (SoN) pre- and post-doctoral students prepare research proposals. Students who are new to the proposal development and submission process tend to underestimate the amount of work necessary to pull together a successful proposal that is also compliant with SoN, UW, and sponsor policies. PROD provides students with an organizational tool that allows them to alert staff of their intention to submit, create and maintain a timeline and checklist, and provide real-time updates to faculty mentors and administrative staff about their progress with each proposal component. PROD offers advice in a variety of compliance areas including: human subjects, laboratory use, vertebrate animals, international work, budget, etc. This tool is designed with consideration for the information needs and behaviors of nursing students, allowing them to work at their own pace while keeping all stakeholders apprised of their progress.
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Re-Imagining the Spectrum of Library Experience

Re-Imagining the Spectrum of Library Experience Diane Clark, Online MLIS, Aryn Orwig, Online MLIS, Kat Redniss, Online MLIS, Susen Shi, Online MLIS Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is an enigmatic condition that can make accessing community resources challenging. In the United States, 1 in 68 American children are on the spectrum, a significant increase within the last half-century. Many public libraries offer programs for children with autism, however there is a lack of services dedicated to young and emerging adults with ASD, a community that often gets overlooked. We have created an adaptable toolkit housed in a user-friendly website that supports public libraries in creating more inclusive spaces, services, programs, and customer service approaches that better serve individuals on the autism spectrum. This digital toolkit supports libraries in breaking down barriers of access for individuals on the spectrum, in turn, encourages more meaningful engagement in programs and library services. The toolkit serves to reduce reticence among staff, empowering librarians to engage administration in a dialogue about best practices for serving the underserved.
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Ride Finder

Ever thought about exploring Seattle on a bike without getting lost? Ever wish to be more active while meeting with friends? Find a great group ride and go! Cascade Bicycle Club offers more than 2,500 group rides annually, ranging from leisurely jaunts to longer endurance rides. Some are urban and some are in the greater Puget Sound region. Free for everybody. This great resource has been living on the website of Cascade Bicycle Club, but with mobile becoming the first screen for more of us, it got less convenient to access everyday. Now with the “Ride Finder” app, you can have these awesome group rides right on your fingertips, whether you’re chilling out in the backyard, or trying to get some quick planning done on the go. It will find you the perfect group ride to join based on your personal needs in just a few easy clicks.
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Sound Expansion: Music Taxonomy and MIRs Redeveloped for Music Streamers

This research-based Capstone deals with the current music streaming community and the fact that streamers of music are at an informational disadvantage when it comes to accessing sounds for their latest projects. With little resources available due to the niche-oriented information needs of these specific streamers, acquiring these sounds can be a difficult practice and thus, leave them with scarce options. After conversing with fellow streamers, it appeared that their needs were in fact, quite varied enough to warrant several potential current MIR methods to be revisited based off recent research of the topic. Understanding current MIR research as well as the relative information needs of specific music streamers could benefit these music streamers, as well as current music information retrieval and their current algorithms, would they need to broaden their horizons for queries, and finally, revamped taxonomies that may spring from potentially more streamer-friendly services in the foreseeable future.
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Spanish Langage Collection Development Evaluation

I partnered with the Yakima Valley Libraries (YVL) in order to assess and evaluate their Spanish-language collection and how they select for that collection. Around the United States and Canada, there has been a trend of low number of library materials in Spanish even when the community in which the public library serves has a significant Spanish speaking population. There are many interwoven factors as to why this occurs including funding and community interest. YVL has made extraordinary strides in improving their general collection development and want to continue to improve their Spanish-language materials and services. My project provides an evaluation of how well their existing Spanish-language materials are circulating and suggestions on how to improve the collection in order to better serve their Spanish speaking community.
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Trellis: Supporting the Growth of Depressed College-Aged Students and their Support Network

Depression acts as one of the leading mental health diagnostics affecting college-aged students today. But with a societal stigma surrounding mental health and barriers to therapy, it is difficult for students to receive the support that they need to better manage their depressive state. Trellis is a mobile application that supports students by encouraging thoughtful, caring conversations and education about depression. To understand the needs of depressed college-aged students, an anonymous survey was posted on Facebook and Reddit, yielding 639 responses. Using ATLAS.ti, a qualitative analysis was conducted to thoroughly vet the answers received. It was discovered that students with depression long for a caring, non-judgmental support group and better education about mental health, as the stigma makes is difficult to seek help. Trellis is designed to connect those that want to get support, to those that want to give support.
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TUNE Onboarding - Reducing Complexity Through User Centered Design

User onboarding is critical in helping new customers successfully adapt to a product. Currently, TUNE’s innovative but extremely complex mobile marketing products provide minimal onboarding assistance for new users. This results in high drop off rates and new customers choosing competitor products. Our team set out to tackle this onboarding problem using the design process. We performed extensive research and competitive analysis to test a combination of new and existing onboarding patterns. Informed by this research and testing, we created a new set of patterns that would solve our sponsor’s specific onboarding issues. When implemented, these new patterns will not only help new users find the product’s core value faster but also lower the number of rudimentary questions that support team and sales engineers need to answer. Overall, this will help acquire new customers, retain existing customers and increased revenue.